Actually, both Pac-Man and E.T. were developed and published by Atari itself. That's not to say that third-party garbage wasn't a major (and probably the primary) problem.

I actually owned and played both those games on the 2600 when I was a kid. As it turns out, they were very buggy (and for me to recognize this as a child says something). Not refuting your point, just an anecdotal comment.

@fwonkas: OK, thanks for clarifying this!

I don't think that their worst nightmare is that everyone can download pirated copies — it's if everyone does.

"There's a myth out there that has gained the status of a cliché: that scientists love proving themselves wrong, that the first thing they do after constructing a hypothesis is to try to falsify it."

This sounds horribly wrong to me. Isn't it the "myth" that the scientific community is self-correcting, not individuals?

[edited for grammar]

I agree...I thought the common wisdom is that scientists like proving each other wrong. In my experience that is not a myth.

And not even that is necessarily true. I'm a physicist, and I would be wary of trying to prove any commonly accepted theory wrong - even if all my data points that way. Contrary to popular belief, getting data that is too non-mainstream and trying to defend it is often academic suicide in science. While science is one of the most rational fields to be working in, this is still a sad but true fact about the human condition.

And there is Feynman's point that it is less embarrassing to prove yourself wrong, especially if you can do it before you publish.

I don't remember if it has to be configured, but I just press Ctrl-Shift-Eject to lock my screen.

There's no eject button on Macbook Airs

Hit the power button. It pops up a modal with restart, sleep, shut down and cancel.

It's like no one read my post. I specifically do not want to sleep.

the sleeping is only for the monitors, the computer is still running.

That's... not true.

cmd + alt + eject is the sleep you're thinking about. ctrl + shift + eject is just for the displays :)

Lately I've been toying with a jQuery pub/sub that publishes based on changeData events: https://gist.github.com/2136216

> IMO, even under prolonged captivity & complete dominance, humans only submit to subjugation, but they never lose their sense of Self.

Actually, it can be done. Depersonalization is relatively common: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization

I have totally had that after 2 all-nighters in a row.

Excellent, thank you for the pointer.

However, do depersonalized people feel like they're no longer individuals, or do they feel like they no longer have control?

they feel that they are somewhat detached from their physical selves... sort of like an observer, watchingyourself go through theday. its an odd sensation.

on another not to parent posters..... whether or not our sense of self is ongoing and inbreakable is certainly not decided or anywhere near scientific fact(yeah yeah, science only disproves, you know what i mean)...

all we can say is that we feel as if we have this continuity..... and that it apprars as if others feel the same way. memory is not like tape.... your sense of timing and events changes constantly, and what you perceive to be your unbroken, continuous sense of self and its memories is, in fact, almost universally incorrect on all kindsof things as it changes over time.... butyou (and i) will feel everything is in order. it is likely constantly teconstructed ad a survival trait.

Also look at surgical anaesthesia.... some theories on this, and subjectively i can see it, while you are under, you arent asleep...... you, your sense of self is gone, totally shut down. no dreams. no sense of how much time had passed when you wake........ not like a regular sleep whenyou at least havesome idea. it always feels like instant teleportation from the surgical suite to the recovery room, even if many hours have passed. then there arethepeople who just never come back.

we are far away from understnding consciousness... which is cool. weve batelyscratched the surface. were just nowrealizing the brain has far more plasticity than we thought a few years ago.... its still a hugemystery.

now take general anaesthesia...... during surgeries i can recall, i was simply gone. that time was simply time i didnt exist.

Interesting comments. Like the typos too :-)

Just loading JavaScript in a non-blocking fashion would probably improve apparent page-load time significantly.